Modern life is an amazing deal. If you make it to this time tomorrow you'll have gained, for free, another five hours, by just turning up for life. Yet this huge achievement, the ever-increasing life expectancy, comes with scary, unintended consequences: loneliness, dementia, and more years with chronic health conditions.
If we reorganised society from the perspective of making the end of life better, what would we focus on?
First, we should concentrate on participation. Older people want to carry on having something to contribute. They want to be useful, not dependent and needy. We need a capability service, something that builds on what they can do, rather than a care service that assumes they must sit in a chair all day.
That is true even of death: the most controversial debate about the right to participation is over whether people can take charge of their own death.
A lifetime consuming does not prepare you well for a good old age. A lifetime with an active hobby which is intellectually engaging will be much more valuable.
The other thing you need is relationships. Our most acute social challenge is the epidemic of loneliness among older people. More than half of people over the age of 65 say they are lonely. The better your relationships the more cared for you are, and the more likely you are to go out and be active. Relationships are at the heart of what makes for a good life.
The old are seen as a drain and a burden on society, an embarrassment to be cared for. Actually, ageing could be a revolutionary force in society, making us see that we need different design principles for living, for reorganising the rest of society, putting participation and relationships before buy-and-sell processes and protocols.
Charles Leadbeater is author of 'We-Think' and was a recent speaker 'On Perspective' as part of our secular sunday sermon series. Click here for more information.
I very much agree with this. We desperately need to see change on this issue.
Posted by: Christian | March 27, 2010 at 10:23 PM